Symbian still top dog in the smartphone market, but rivals catching up.
More than 1.2 billion mobile phones were sold globally last year, according to the latest research from analyst firm Gartner.
That's down 0.9% on 2008's figures, but the fourth quarter of 2009 saw an 8.3% year-on-year rise to 340 million handset sales.
"The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices," says research director Carolina Milanesi.
Nokia remained top dog with nearly 441 million handset sales in 2009, taking a market share of 36.4% - down from 38.6% in 2008.
Second and third placed Samsung and LG both gained market share - to 19.5% and 10.1% respectively - while fourth and fifth placed Motorola and Sony Ericsson both declined to 4.8% and 4.5% respectively.
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Gartner has also number-crunched smartphone sales for the year, revealing that more than 172 million smartphones were sold during 2009.
Symbian is still the largest smartphone OS with a 46.9% share of those sales, but that fell from a market share of 52.4% in 2008.
"Symbian had become uncompetitive in recent years, but its market share, particularly on Nokia devices, is still strong," says principal research analyst Roberta Cozza. "If Symbian can use this momentum, it could return to positive growth."
The big winners? BlackBerry took a 19.9% smartphone market share in 2009 - up from 16.6% in 2008 - while iPhone grew from 8.2% to 14.4% in the same period.
Windows Mobile slipped from 11.8% to 8.7%, but Android is on the charge, taking a market share of 3.9% in 2009, up from 0.5% in 2008.
"Android's success experienced in the fourth quarter of 2009 should continue into 2010 as more manufacturers launch Android products, but some CSPs and manufacturers have expressed growing concern about Google's intentions in the mobile market," says Cozza.
"If such concerns cause manufacturers to change their product strategies or CSPs to change which devices they stock, this might hinder Android's growth in 2010."
